Conventional collaborative-space solutions reflect older architectures of input and output, which privilege individual use and reflect low bandwidth assumptions. Furthermore, even as users meet to get work done, their digital tools are incompatible. The devices and “solutions” people bring to a meeting or presentation simply often cannot work together. The physical spaces where users meet to collaborate must evolve, to reflect new technology and, importantly, user and business demand. Consider two shifts in the marketplace.
First, pixels are abundant. Displays are cheaper in price and higher in quality. Companies and organizations leverage increased display resolutions, network capacities, and computational systems to present mixed media in conference room and command wall settings. The user goal is impactful, pixel-savvy presentation, discussion, and analysis. Second, data is abundant. Computational devices and systems for storing, accessing, and manipulating data are cheaper and higher quality.
Computing's form factors also are diverse, and its embodiments—desktops, laptops, mobile telephones, tablets, network solutions, cloud computing, enterprise systems—only continue to proliferate. These devices and solutions handle data in a myriad of ways. Across the spectrum, from the capture of low-level data, its processing into appropriate high-level events, its manipulation by the user, and exchange across networks, computers implement different approaches in, for example, data format and typing, operating system, and applications. These are only some of the many challenges that stymie interoperability.